News & Updates

Last month in Miami, Florida, the Center for Out-of-Court Divorce (COCD), together with IAALS at the University of Denver, received Meritorious Recognition from the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services in connection with its annual Louis M. Brown Award for Legal Access. The Committee cited that it was impressed with the Center’s family-centered approach to divorce resolution.

As reported by the Washington Post, the President is not the only one who has taken on the courts recently: it is also happening in state legislatures around the country. This comes as no surprise to state court watchers; in fact, legislation targeting state courts for unpopular decisions is now commonplace. (Our March 2016, January 2015, and February 2014 blog posts chronicle these efforts.)

In July 2016, the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators recognized the important needs of litigants in our state courts and responded by adopting a set of 13 Recommendations focused on ensuring our courts are affordable, efficient, and fair for all.

A new report conducted by Ecorys UK, Experiences of consumers who may be vulnerable in family law, explores the impacts of personal and situational vulnerabilities for people seeking legal assistance with family law matters. Specifically, the study explored access, cost, and quality of legal representation in the modern-day legal market—a market with increasingly more options for people contemplating or experiencing involvement in the legal system.

Last September, we held our 5th Annual Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers Conference, where we welcomed approximately 100 legal educators and legal employers from around the country (and the world!) to discuss the measurement of meaningful learning outcomes and development of hiring criteria, focusing on the results of our Foundations for Practice project. It has become a tradition to kick off the first day of the conference with a series of Ignite presentations (snappy, 6 minute, auto-advancing) from ETL Consortium School faculty who want to share their projects, successes, and ideas. Presenters spoke on topics ranging from faculty resources to career development to simulations. You can find recordings of all of the 2016 Ignites below.

Debtor’s prisons have been illegal in the United States for nearly 200 years, and in 1983 the United State Supreme Court’s ruling in Bearden v. Georgia again made it clear that judges cannot send people to jail simply because they do not have the…

In every state across the nation, judges in family court regularly deal with challenging custody issues as families proceed through the divorce process. And, recent amendments to Alaska’s divorce laws have added another important custody consideration: pets.

New Mexico Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Daniels had grim news for state legislators at his annual State of the Judiciary speech last month: the state’s judicial system may no longer be able to provide New Mexicans with adequate access to their Constitutional rights due to a crippling financial crisis.

IAALS Executive Director Rebecca Love Korulis wrote in this week's Denver Post, “But in the legal system as in football, the judges on the bench and the referees on the field are charged with enforcing the rules – sometimes in close calls. While we may not like a ruling, we respect and accept the authority of those entrusted with making it.”

Last year, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts dedicated his 2015 year-end report on the State of the Judiciary to extolling the new amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He noted the amendments serve as an important stride forward…

Robust evaluation of judges has a dual purpose. It educates judges on their strengths and weaknesses on the bench and equips them to make necessary improvements. It also empowers voters, legislators, and governors with meaningful information they can use when deciding whether to retain or reappoint judges. Across the country, people are struggling with how to gauge whether a judge is doing a good job.

The January 2017 edition of Family Court Review is dedicated to the Honoring Families Initiative’s Family Bar Summit: Shaping the System for the Families We Serve. The Summit, held in November 2015, brought together national thought leaders from diverse professional organizations to identify obstacles to serving children and families in separation and divorce matters and explore opportunities for meaningful change.

Later this week at the ABA Midyear Meeting, a panel discussion will focus on the current challenges facing our civil justice system, recommendations for achieving civil justice for all, and how to make these recommendations a reality in our state…

Based on its decade of work in the field of judicial performance evaluation (JPE), IAALS was invited to contribute a chapter on this topic to the recently published 8th edition of the American Bar Association’s The Improvement of the Administration of Justice.

It has been just over a year since substantial changes were made to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, aimed at reducing the high costs and long delays faced by civil court litigants. And, this effort has not been limited to the federal courts. Many state-level changes have also been implemented across the country and Colorado has emerged as a leader by incorporating the federal amendments and making permanent many aspects of its Civil Access Pilot Project.

The Deschutes County Circuit Court in Oregon recently adopted an Informal Domestic Relations Trial (IDRT) process to improve access to family court for parties who prefer and will benefit from a simpler decision-making process than a traditional trial. The process is available to parties with attorneys as well as self-represented litigants, and is gaining support as a fair and streamlined way to resolve many family law matters.

The latest IAALS report offers insights for legal employers and aims to close the employment gap. Many legal employers still rely on criteria like class rank, law school prestige, and law review participation to inform hiring decisions, but how effective are those criteria in making good hires? A study released today by IAALS, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, finds that when it comes to hiring “the whole lawyer,” experience matters. IAALS’ latest report, Hiring the Whole Lawyer: Experience Matters, continues to share insights from a study of more than 24,000 lawyers that promises to inform the way new lawyers are educated and hired.

Our Foundations for Practice project has permeated the profession as law schools and legal employers seek to bridge the gap between ensuring students learn the right skills and competencies to be successful in practice and ensuring legal employers have the best hiring criteria to secure the right candidates.

Daniel Ritchie, and his longtime assistant, Carolyn Foster, are moving into offices here at IAALS this week. They left campus eleven years ago when Dan stepped down as Chancellor of the University of Denver. But, throughout his various stints in the interim—the most recent of which was at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts—Dan has always said he wanted to return to campus at some point.

At a point when public mistrust of the government seems to be at an all-time high, a recent survey conducted by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) shows that public opinion of at least one branch of government is trending in the right…